


Night Lights

by sleepymarvel



Series: HOA One-Shots [3]
Category: House of Anubis
Genre: Canon Compliant, Extended Scene, Gen, Kidnapping, Missing Scene, Season/Series 01, alfie and jerome mentioned because I adore them, but I love him anyway, my longest hoa fic yet, patricia being sarcastic and iconic, patricia centric, rufus once again being a bastard, set between house of risk/house of thieves and house of hazards/house of charades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24356698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepymarvel/pseuds/sleepymarvel
Summary: Even now, Rufus could imagine how beautiful the Ankh would look in his hands, glowing gold; how sweet the elixir would taste when it meant that he’d never have to taste it again.He deserved to live forever. He deserved it more than that old man back at Anubis House, that’s for sure.
Series: HOA One-Shots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755970
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Night Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Story picks up directly after Rufus locks Patricia in his van at the end of House of Risk/House of Thieves.
> 
> Enjoy!

As the Anubis House grandfather clock neared ten o’clock, and the house was almost quiet enough to hear a pin drop, Patricia was locked in the devil’s van and headed towards a secondary location. Which was never a good start to a kidnapping, thank you very much.

As Rufus drove fast out of the clearing, the clearing where they were supposed to meet Joy, red flashing warning lights began to go off in Patricia’s head. This was bad. This was really _really_ bad.

Somehow she managed to drop her ring out the window, which was genuinely a huge feat considering the circumstances, and that eased her fear quite a bit. Somebody would see the ring in the clearing and come find her, she was positive of it. 

Patricia was still scared, certainly, but suddenly she was much more pissed off than anything else. Her best friend disappeared into thin air, everyone was treating her like she was crazy, and now she was being _kidnapped ?_ Her luck seriously couldn't get any worse. 

“Where are you taking me?” Patricia demanded, voice strong and steady despite the fact that she was nearly having a panic attack. And had someone replaced her blood with ice water without telling her? It sure felt like it. “Why’d you lock the doors? What’s going on? _Let me out!_ ”

The van bounced as the tires leapt off the cracked pavement and down onto a dirt path. When Rufus didn’t answer her, Patricia tried the door again. For a brief moment she considered jumping out of the moving vehicle like one of the heroes in the action films she’d watched religiously with Alfie and Jerome. Alfie always said, to a chorus of Jerome rolling his eyes and Patricia laughing, “WWJMD. What would John McClane do?”

To start with, John McClane wouldn’t be locked in a stranger’s car at nearly ten o'clock at night with no plan of escape. _But –_

Rufus wasn’t a stranger, was he? Was he any more of a stranger than Nina? Or the teachers? Or Victor? Rufus had always been nice to her. He didn’t call her crazy when she told him how scary the teachers were acting or that she thought the new girl was somehow involved. He'd told her she was clever. That's why he'd gone to her for help in the first place. Rufus was intense, but he was on her side. Wasn’t he?

Patricia continued to try the door, despite the fact she knew it was locked and there was no use. The thought of just sitting there and allowing Rufus to take her to some secondary location without even trying to escape sounded less than appealing. 

Rufus’ eyes snapped over to her for a second, piercing blue and manic, watched as she tried uselessly to fumble with the door handle, and then returned his gaze back to the road.

 _Belt up Patricia,_ Rufus had said after locking the doors, _It's going to be a bumpy ride._

That had been the understatement of the year. Rufus was driving like he was the getaway driver in a bank heist, which Patricia thought that was particularly stupid and loony. Did he think something was chasing them? Patricia rolled her eyes as she continued trying the door. 

It had only been a few minutes since the clearing and now they were close to the warehouse where Rufus had been keeping some of his things during his stakeout of Anubis House. Most of it was research, old artifacts he'd managed to get his hands on or Ancient Egyptian text, but some of it was actually personal. Excruciatingly so. There were old letters from Sarah that he'd kept with him despite their falling out. He'd tried to dispose of them before, but he couldn't make himself follow through with it. It might've been some latent Osirian instinct that he couldn't quite keep in check. Or maybe the letters were just sentimental. It didn't matter. He'd have to move those things now. A pity, but Patricia was a bright girl and he didn’t want her messing with things that were none of her business. 

Another glance over at her and Patricia’s eyes were full of a sort of confused rage that was almost amusing. She’d been a good helper when he needed her to be, before she started causing all this trouble for him. And he liked her attitude. Maybe that was because she reminded him of himself, back when he was quite a bit younger and quite a bit less enlightened on what was important in life. But none of that mattered anyway, because soon Rufus would trade her for the elixir and the Chosen One, and he would live forever. 

The van shot by looming trees and dark woods. It had almost been five minutes since the clearing. The van's heater was on full blast and that may have been comforting, if not for the fact that Patricia felt like her bones were made of icicles. 

“Are you deaf?” Patricia bit out, pushing the panic as far back into herself as she could manage, “What’s going on?”

Looking at Rufus now was like looking at a completely different person. All pretenses of friendliness in his face were gone and replaced with a slightly aggravated twitch in his jaw. He had that same creepy dead look behind his eyes that the teachers would get when she’d ask them about Joy, but it was different somehow, _worse even_. Beneath his impatient calm he looked dangerous and almost crazed.

Had he always had that look about him?

Patricia swallowed the lump in her throat, _I’m not scared_ , she told herself firmly. Except she was, and she was sure Rufus could tell that she was, despite the fact she was all but setting him on fire with her glare. 

“You’ll understand soon enough.” Rufus drawled, cryptically, finally answering one of her questions. With a non answer, of course. Patricia scoffed. Rufus sounded sort of ridiculous, like a villain in some sort of old-timey movie. Fabian liked old movies. Sometimes he'd watch them in the living room, on Saturdays when they were allowed to use the TV, and Patricia would stop a moment and watch the black and white pictures moving on the screen. Fabian was always completely entranced by them, for some strange reason, and he never seemed to notice that he had finished his popcorn even after there was nothing left in the bucket. 

_"You know it's 2011, Fabian." Patricia sassed in a teasing tone, "We have color TVs now. Even Victor has a color TV and he's ancient."_

_"Huh?" Fabian looked up from the movie like he'd just realized he was still in Anubis House and not in some old western cantina._

_"I said you're a dork." Patricia clarified, teasing, causing both Alfie and Jerome to burst out laughing from their spot raiding Trudy's freshly baked treats. Fabian rolled his eyes, but he was smiling._

Rufus even looked like one of those black and white villains in Fabian's old movies. He had that strange ancient look about him, despite the fact he couldn't be much more than forty five. Patricia scoffed again. 

_I’m not scared_ , she repeated to herself, _Like hell I’m scared of someone who wants people to call him something as ridiculous as Renee._

The van stopped abruptly, causing Patricia to lurch forward against her seat belt. It hadn’t even been five minutes since the clearing, which put her mind even more at ease. Her ring was sitting somewhere in the grass only a few minutes away and somebody would see it; they would see her ring and they'd come find her. 

Patricia thought she’d even be okay if it were Victor and the teachers who managed to rescue her, as long as they promptly explained what the actual hell was going on and admitted that they’d been lying about Joy’s disappearance. 

When Patricia grounded herself from the shock of the abrupt stop, she realized that Rufus had parked outside of a small warehouse in the woods. Without saying anything, his mind was clearly elsewhere, Rufus snatched the keys from the ignition and looped around the back of the van. Patricia couldn't see him anymore, but she could hear him moving things around behind her.

The warehouse, sitting under the trees the way it was and covered in grass and vines, looked as if it was being swallowed by a large woodland monster. Maybe that was just because it was pitch dark and she was now functioning solely off of adrenaline, but perhaps not. Stranger things have happened; the disappearance of her first and closest friend being the strangest of them.

Patricia watched as the leaves gnawed at the brick and cement like it was a meal and she wondered if Joy had been stashed in a place like this before escaping to their school play. She had so many more questions now and it didn’t help matters that Rufus apparently had a screw loose and forgot that private investigators weren't supposed to kidnap people. 

The passenger’s door swung open and Rufus was standing outside expectantly, one hand holding the door open for her as if he were some kind of chauffeur from hell.

“Get out.” Rufus demanded, voice low and menacing. He was clearly trying to intimidate her, but Patricia wasn’t feeling it. There was no way she was going to get out of the van and let him escort her over to that creepy murder warehouse. _Absolutely not._

“No way.” Patricia said immediately, sarcastic as ever, “Not until you start filling me in on _exactly_ what our plan is. We’re a team, remember?”

Rufus’ eyes darkened, “Get out of the car, Patricia.”

He was impatient again. Every moment he didn’t have the cup in his grasp was a moment that set him on edge and made his teeth hurt. Even now, Rufus could imagine how beautiful the Ankh would look in his hands, glowing gold; how sweet the elixir would taste when it meant that he’d never have to taste it again. He deserved to live forever. _He deserved it more than that old man back at Anubis House, that’s for sure._

Patricia was looking at him like he’d grown a second head. Did Rufus really think that she was going to listen to him? After he’d stolen her phone, locked her in his van, and drove her to the scariest looking warehouse she’d ever seen? Yeah, unlikely.

“No.” Patricia said firmly, and reached for the handle of the door to close it again, “Take me back to school.”

Rufus snatched her wrist before it even reached the door handle, his grip was cold as a corpse, “You’re testing my patience.”

“Hey!” Patricia exclaimed, as Rufus pulled her out of the car. She’d been angry and scared before but now she was livid. She was sure that the fear was still in there somewhere, after all she was being manhandled by someone who must’ve escaped a mental asylum, but all she was thinking about was how much she hated being dragged around like this. “What’re you doing that hurts?!”

She was struggling, but Rufus was stronger than her, and he only released her wrist after he unlocked the padlock on the warehouse door and lead her inside.

The door shut with a _thud!_ behind them and Rufus pointed to an old looking reclining chair in the center of the room, “Go over there. Sit down and shut up.”

“What if I don’t?” Patricia challenged, unmoving from her spot near the door. Rufus, who’d momentarily been occupied with tossing an old blanket onto her chair and preparing to set up a gas lamp on the adjacent table, rounded on her.

He took a deliberate step towards her and she involuntarily took a step back. She hated that she did that, because it certainly clued him in to the fact that she actually _was_ afraid, but thankfully he didn’t say anything to make it worse.

“Fine.” Patricia said, reluctantly sitting in the chair, “But I’m not scared of you, okay? I’m only sitting here because I want to.”

Rufus glanced at her, that smug look on his face again, and Patricia somehow restrained herself from clawing his eyes out. 

“People are going to look for me, you know.” Patricia continued, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, “Nina knows I’m with you and she knows your name. _Your real name._ When I don’t show up at school tomorrow, she’ll find it totally suspicious. She might even tell Victor and he’ll drug you up and put you back in that hospital. You might as well let me go now before things get bad for you.”

“That’s not going to happen. I'm not scared of your foolish friends.” Rufus said, "And if Victor tries anything like that again he'll regret it." He looked entirely amused with himself and Patricia's blood boiled.

 _You’re going to **regret** kidnapping me, _Patricia thought, _and I hate you._

“I hate you.” Patricia repeated out loud this time, “I hate you and when they find me they'll put you in jail for the rest of your life.” _They’ll find my ring. They’ll find the clue I left. You’re so screwed, motherfu—_

“Go ahead and get comfortable.” Rufus smirked, enjoying the irony of her statement and completely unbothered by her threat, “You’re going to be here for a while.”

“Yeah right. You’re delusional.” _And I’m not scared of you._

“Perhaps.” Rufus said with a shrug. He’d gathered up a bunch of old looking stuff and tossed it into his bag. There had been lots of old looking papers, some littered with hieroglyphics, and old looking photographs that must’ve been taken with an absolutely _ancient_ camera. Patricia was too upset to care much about any of that.

"You never wanted to help me, did you?" Patricia asked and it was okay when he ignored her question, because she already knew the answer.

Rufus opened the warehouse door again, carrying his bag behind him, spared on last glance at her, “Sweet dreams, Patricia. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

"You can't leave me in _—"_

The door slammed shut, the locks clicked, and it was dark.

_"—here!"_

Moonlight poured in from the high windows and blanketed the room in its dull glow. Outside Rufus’ van started up and Patricia could hear the last sounds of the vehicle departing. 

Patricia had never been scared of the dark. When she was little, she never needed a night light and she certainly never felt the need to cringe at the thought of being stuck in a small dark room. She’d done plenty of escape rooms over the summer. _Easy._

She’d even teased Joy lightheartedly over the fact that she’d occasionally use a nightlight back in their dorm, even though she didn’t really mind it. Something was different now, however, and Patricia would’ve been really thankful for that small little _Twilight_ themed night light right about now.

It was way too dark, despite the gas lamp that Rufus had left, despite the flickering over head light, and despite the moonlight. Patricia hated it. She really want to get back home (to Anubis House).

The warehouse was littered with old tires, ropes, and boxes. Despite the fact that they were lit up by the moonlight and the yellow glow of the gas lamp, they still managed to look menacing. It reminded Patricia of the time she woke up in the middle of the night to Alfie screaming from all the way downstairs. He and Jerome had some dirty laundry stacked up on a chair and Alfie woke up and thought it was some kind of giant deformed alien creature. Victor had _not_ been happy about that. He was especially livid about that incident for some reason. What the kids didn't know was that Alfie's yelling had interrupted a basement secret society meeting and nearly scared Mr. Sweet half to death.

Patricia remembered that night particularly vivid now, especially since the way the boxes in the warehouse were stacked they certainly could've passed for some kind of monster. She practically jumped at the sound of branches thrashing against the roof of the building. Leaves cast shadows through the moonlight, the sound of crickets chirping was almost deafening, and Patricia was sure she could hear something moving outside in the woods. 

She pulled the blanket that Rufus had left for her up and over her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Her friends would find her. Nina would come looking for her, even though Patricia was never nice to her. Then, they'd save Joy and everything would go back to normal. 

_I’m not scared,_ Patricia said to herself as she imagined finally being reunited with Joy, _I’m not scared at all._

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys liked this! I thought it would be cool to write a continuation of this particular scene in hoa because I was disappointed when they glossed over most of what happened when Patricia was kidnapped and just skipped to the next day. She was probably scared as hell, but she was not going to show it because she didn't want Rufus to think she was scared of him and it probably helped her to compartmentalize by not coming to terms with the fact that she was actually scared herself. Patricia comes off as the type of person who's like _I'm not scared on anything!_ but she's actually scared of a lot. Thanks for reading!


End file.
